Notes on Night

Let me start by saying that this blog post is neither a tribute to nor diatribe against M. Night Shyamalan, who despite his regrettable recent creations (Lady in the Water and The Happening, I'm looking in your direction), is still my Philly boy, and so I love him.

But speaking of Philly boys (specifically, my most favorite one), I feel like I understand Will Smith's character motivation a little better now than I used to. Since Tim and I became parents back in February, our understanding and feelings toward nighttime have changed a great deal. Those changes have not held steady, but have been constantly morphing into still newer feelings and experiences as Weston gets older and older. But I thought I'd provide a brief summary of the exhausted/frustrating/encouraging/discouraging Operation Baby Sleep thus far.

The most difficult nights with our precious, beloved newborn Weston were the very first two, right after we came home from the hospital, and before we began implementing the Happiest Baby on the Block techniques. We were pretty much awake the entire night, shushing and holding and feeding and rocking the baby, having absolutely no idea what we were doing, trying to get the screeching little bundle of joy to fall asleep for a few hours in his crib. In the wee hours of the second night, I remember just giving in to my exhaustion, lying down on the loveseat in the nursery, and letting him fall asleep on top of me while I dozed off. (This was in spite of my firm desire to begin training him to sleep properly - at night, in his crib, for long stretches - as soon as possible. All the sleep experts warn against letting them fall asleep on your chest because it's not a permanent solution. Well, they can go suck a lemon. I WAS EXHAUSTED.)

Once we started with Happiest Baby on the Block, however, things improved, if only slightly. The swaddling prevented his newborn spaz-arm-flailing and helped him stay asleep for a few hours (alternating between two, three, four, and sometimes five in a stretch) once he had fallen asleep. However, getting him to fall asleep in the first place was still a chore, and required up to an hour sometimes of standing in his room, jiggling him and swaying him in our arms until his eyes closed and his head dropped and we could finally put him in the crib. It is because of this sometimes ridiculously long ritual of jiggling and swaying that Tim and I began to dread the night, much akin to Will Smith in I Am Legend. (Hence the photo up at the top.) Yes, that's right, I equate our dread and anxiety of Weston's middle-of-the-night cries with Dr. Neville's dread and fear of nighttime zombie attacks. ....Well, okay, maybe it wasn't that bad, but I remember waking in the night to his scream-cries and instantly being filled with anxiety that he was hungry or needy or in pain or whatever else, while also dreading the seemingly interminable process of returning him to sleep. I used to bolt upright and run into his room, only to begin the lengthy Operation Baby Sleep once again, complete with frizzy bedhead and drooping eyelids.

Fortunately, after those tricky first few weeks, Weston's sleep habits began to improve dramatically. We still swaddled him, but at times he was able to fall asleep on his own, and sometimes he would sleep up to seven or eight hours in a stretch before needing to eat again. Hallelujah!!! We were delighted, not only that we were (hopefully) getting better at the whole thing, but also that we were finally able to get a solid three- or four- (or dare I say five-) hour block of sleep. (The greatly reduced sleep on our part was, and is still, due to the fact that we genuinely enjoy our evening quiet time once Weston is in bed. We do chores, we go on the computer, we tidy up, we watch movies or TV, we cuddle. We adore Weston, but this quiet time is priceless in terms of our sanity.) Anyway, our moods started to improve, our lives started to normalize, and the perpetual dark circles under our eyes began to lighten ever so slightly.

The longest that Weston has slept in a non-waking stretch (to date) was 10.5 hours, which was miraculous though short-lived. I believe that he's been fairly precocious with his sleep habits, thanks to Happiest Baby on the Block (and no thanks to poor, inexperienced Tim and Jean). Eventually, when he was about three and a half months old, we ceased the swaddling process, mainly because he was usually able to get his wiggly little arms out of it much more efficiently now. That was a trial in itself, more due to a recurrence of our Dr. Neville-like dread and anxiety, than to the actual difficulty of the adjustment for Weston. Finally, he was sleeping in his crib, at night, without any assistance from a swaddle or anything else (just his trusty blue knit blankie to cling to, if necessary). We sighed with relief.

Lately, however, Operation Baby Sleep has required some renewed attention. Weston has somehow regressed to sleeping in maximum stretches of only six or seven or eight hours at night, followed by a nighttime feeding, and another smaller stretch of sleep (and occasionally, yet another feeding and another sleep). We're trying to get him accustomed to being in his crib for 11 to 12 hours straight, so that when he does (hopefully, miraculously, joyfully) sleep that long, it will feel natural. Yet in the meantime, his rumbly tummy is still telling him in the middle of the night that he needs to eat, which is preventing him from sleeping all the way through. (Baby experts say that 4-month-olds no longer require the nutrition of nighttime feedings, and that it is a good idea to begin easing down on those feedings for baby's benefit as well as parents' benefit.)

So, Operation Baby Sleep goes like this these days: We put Weston down at 7:30 or 8:00 pm, following his regular nighttime routine (bathtime, lotion massage, nursing, prayer). He wakes around 3:00 or 4:00 am. Tim goes in and soothes him with a binky, and Weston falls back asleep for a short time. Later, Weston wakes again, Tim soothes again. When Weston eventually becomes absolutely infuriated with the binky, then I show up and finally feed him. As we keep up with this program each night, it appears that the length of time before Weston's first waking is getting slightly longer. Plus, the binky usually works like a charm, at least for a little while. Yet his tummy is still telling him that he's hungry, so I eventually have to feed him. The ultimate goal? The longer he has to go until he can eat, the longer it will take his tummy to feel hungry and initiate the wake-up. Eventually, he won't feel hungry at all at night, and will (cue angelic choir) sleep 11 or 12 hours, straight through the night.

That is the goal, anyway, and hopefully it will happen sooner rather than later. Tim and Jean could use some real, long, deep sleep, which we have missed ever since this wiggly, smiley, adorable heavenly gift entered our lives. Hey, at least our previous practice of curling up into a shivering, wide-eyed ball in the bathtub has ended. (Now I know how Will Smith conducted his research for Dr. Neville in I Am Legend, by the way - maybe fighters of flesh-eating zombies don't really exist, but the exhausted parents of sleep-averse newborns sure do.) Fortunately, we don't fear or dread the night anymore. We are accustomed to feeling tired, and we get on with our lives accordingly. We are thankful that we go to sleep like normal people again, and even if we don't sleep LIKE normal people yet, at least we're getting there. :-)